Another Amazing Year at DGH!

Another amazing year at Dr. George Hall PS! As the 2017-2018 school year draws to a close, this is the perfect time to reflect on our school community’s many successes and celebrations. Our first celebration would be the wonderful and caring students we work with each day. Lunchroom monitors help out in our Primary classrooms, our recycling captains help set a great environmental tone for our school, our older students work with our younger students as Reading Buddies and our older students so often set excellent examples for our younger students on activity days, like the Olympics. Our younger students do equally great things! From their high level of participation in school activity days (I defy you to keep up with our grades 1 and 2 students when they are running around!) to the incredible amount of fundraising they do, they, too, set a wonderful example for others.

The number of extracurricular opportunities and activities available for our students would be our next celebration. Dr. George Hall PS is definitely a school in which students can involve themselves in a little bit of almost anything! The Band, the Yarn Club, the Choir and the Wizard of Oz all provided the chance for students to enjoy the Arts. As always, DGH offered students the chance to participate in pretty much all of the sports that the TLDSB offers. Our Primary students continued to participate in County Track and Field, and our Junior and Intermediate students had teams in everything from Soccer to Skipping. Students and staff alike put tremendous effort in these extracurriculars, giving up many recesses and coming before/after school for practices. Academics are the core of our business; however, we know that so many of our students derive great satisfaction from extracurriculars.

Thanks to staff and our Parent Council for offering a wide variety of other fun activities and events. Breakfast with Santa and the Christmas Shoppe, for example, make the holiday season just that much more fun and enjoyable for our students. Whether meeting Santa, enjoying pancakes or purchasing a special gift for a special person, these events make the holiday season that much more wonderful. Our Olympics Week was a tremendous success! Our Intermediate students acted as event and team leaders – doing an outstanding job; our Primary and Junior students had an incredible amount of participation. Track and Field Days (from Kindergarten to Grade 8) gave our track and field athletes the opportunity to shine (which is all about doing your personal best). Add in other activities such as Scientists in the School and Jimmy Chapman, not to mention a number of different trips, and our students get to sample a little bit of everything.

Our Student Leadership Council helps to make our school a fun place to be. Organizing activities like the Christmas Candy-Grams and Christmas raffles helps to add some fun to the school year, while raising money for the We Charities that they support. They were also involved in the Loonie Line and Walk for Water assembly. Not only did they raise money for the We Charity, they also helped our students understand the amount of work people go through in obtaining clean drinking water each day in the developing word. They are amongst the most enthusiastic helpers and event/team leaders in activities like the Olympics – setting a positive tone for others.

A final note of thanks to all of you: the parents, guardians and relatives who are so heavily involved in school life. Sports teams cannot run if students are not dropped off early or picked up after school. Activities that involve fundraising or donations cannot happen without your efforts. Field trips cannot run without volunteer supervisors.